Archive for April, 2012

Another wonderful summer day today with the animals… well I know technically it’s spring, but in Arizona it feels like summer!

The geese are getting big. Yesterday I noticed that their adult feathers are slowly coming in and they’re probably triple the size of when I first picked them up. I enjoy watching them very much, there’s something about geese that are just entertaining.

The lambs are also getting big, but growing considerably slower than the goslings and they definitely don’t have feathers poking out. : ) I’ve never been around sheep before and I can’t believe how badly I was missing out. These are some awesome, intelligent, fun animals. I think I sort of thought of them like goats before, which I do have experience with. But I think they’re different in many ways and just lovely animals to me.

Baby’s legs have strengthened a lot, but he’s still not 100%. It’s been a long time since his condition became apparent to me and I’m concerned that he’ll never fully recover. No one seems to have an answer for me as to how long it takes muscle loss to rebuild. I know that when I dislocated my jaw as a kid, it took almost a year to heal! I hope for Baby it will be the same. He’s a big beautiful animal and although I don’t think he’s in any pain, he doesn’t deserve to have any difficulty getting around. I move him back and forth between the pasture and the round pen. I’m not sure which he likes more. In the pasture he has room to roam and browse, but in the round pen he gets to eat all the food he wants without Nessie bothering him. : )

Typically goslings, chicks, ducklings, etc are housed inside while they’re vulnerable, either in your home or in a secure barn. In this case mine are being kept in a big tupperware bin in my mud room near the front door. I like going to bed and knowing they’re 100% safe from predators. But during the day time I’ve begun to let them outside in my hornbill’s aviary. I figured my hornbill wouldn’t mind, but I was surprised to observe that he actually seems to enjoy their company and enjoy interacting with them.

The goslings are precious and just seem so happy any time they do anything. I love watching them interact amongst themselves and now around Marion (my hornbill).

It seems like Marion could use a full-time friend, so it’s a very good thing that I have another baby hornbill reserved. She should be hatched sometime this week and ready to come live with Marion in a couple months.

I was able to capture something rare today on video. Nessie being angry!

Or technically, this is Nessie displaying dominance.

There’s a lot of interesting body language and vocalizations in this video.

Listen to the sputtering and gurgling noises, which is literally spit being gargled up the camel’s throat into their mouth. Look at her posturing, her stiff neck and straining eyes. You can clearly see the whites in them, when normally you can’t. And most obvious perhaps is his droopy lower lip, which is carried like that during displays. Finally, at the end you can see Nessie bucking and kicking.